Lightboard Lessons: Elliptic Curve Cryptography

You've seen our Whiteboard Wednesday videos, but we are kicking it up a notch and introducing our new "Lightboard Lessons" video series.  In this first video, John talks about the basics of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC).  ECC has been around for a while and it's gaining popularity as a viable alternative to RSA.  But what exactly is ECC?  And what are some of the key benefits it provides in protecting your web applications?  Watch this video and find out!

Resources

• BIG-IP Support for Elliptic Curve Cryptography
• Associating Multiple SSL Cert/Key Pair Types with an SSL Profile
• LogJams, DHE Parameters, and Other Obstacles to TLS Excellence
• Supporting Elliptic Curve Cryptography
• Stronger Keys and Faster Security with ECC

We hope you enjoy this series of Lightboard Lessons, and stay tuned for many more exciting videos!

Clarification:  During my quick explanation of RSA, I said that two prime numbers are multiplied together to produce a really big prime number (at 2:20 - 2:25 in the video).  As we all know, a prime number only has itself and 1 as factors.  So, if you multiply two numbers together, the resultant number will at least have the two numbers you multiplied as factors…thus not making it prime.  Technically speaking, the product of the two prime numbers in RSA is called a “semiprime” number because its only factors are 1, itself, and two prime numbers.  Here’s a more detailed explanation of semiprimes:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiprime

For each RSA number "n", there exist prime numbers “p” and “q” such that n = p × q

The problem is to find these two primes, given only n.  The salient point for RSA is that “n” will always be semiprime. 

All that said, I should have said “a really big semiprime number” in the video, but I didn’t want to take up too much time discussing RSA since this video is targeted for ECC.